Hot on the heels of letter no.10 here we are again. There has been so much travelling I had to break the letters up a bit-so we continue our journey heading on north.

Any of you who on our travels have invited us to stay, BE WARNED we could take you up on it! We contacted Lorry and Isabelle who we had met in Mexico on our Copper Canyon trip. They live in a place called Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast, a peninsula just across the water from Vancouver. They really looked after us well showing us around their locality by car, foot and even in their plane. I wasn’t nervous at all in Lorry’s 4 seater. The views were amazing. Izzy is also a great cook so we had some fabulous home cooking and she also sent us away with delicious homemade pickled beetroot and jams. We also took the opportunity to prepare for the next stage of our trip and another highlight. We took a cruise up Alaska’s inside passage to the Hubbard Glacier. Mike had seen the trip advertised in a US Sunday paper and duly booked it over the phone. When we arrived at the cruise terminal in Vancouver we thought we had hit a setback when our names weren’t on the manifest. After about half an hour the situation was resolved, our names had suffered from Chinese whispers. Our new names were M Kinston and A Danzie.

We introduced ourselves to the captain at the first opportunity and congratulated him on his recent promotion. He was only 36 and had been a captain for just 3 weeks.

Whist we were away the semi finals of the European cup were staged. This coincided with a stop at Juneau, the capital of Alaska. Watching the audience was more entertaining than the match as the bar was filled with our ship’s crew. The officers were mainly Greek and other crew were strongly made up of Eastern Europeans who provided the fan base for the Czech Republic. Well, what a laugh when the game came to its ultimate conclusion, there was our highly esteemed and professional young captain being danced around on the shoulders of a fellow officer! He was so handsome he could have got away with anything as far as I was concerned. Wonder what the celebrations were like on the bridge the following Sunday? Opa!

Other stops on the route were Ketchikan, the 4th largest city, and Sitka the old Russian Capital of Alaska, complete with Russian Cathedral. We also sailed right up to the Hubbard Glacier. Usually the ships stop about 2 miles away from the glacier but we were much closer than that. Perhaps a side effect of having a young ambitious captain in charge. We spent two hours in front of the glacier; it was really cold and the most amazing different shades of blue. At various intervals huge chunks of ice fell off the glacier into the water, this is called ice carving. The resulting chunks of ice in the water made popping sounds like Rice Crispies in milk. This is the noise made by oxygen being released from the ice into the water.

The scenery consisted of fjords and tree covered islands. Each place we stopped at is called a city but in reality nowhere was anywhere near the size of Cromer. We also ate and drank copious amounts as is a cruising tradition. To give you an idea of how much food is provided the ship left Vancouver with over 24, 000 lbs beef on board. That’s for a week for nearly 2000 passengers and just under 1000 crew. The food tasted excellent and was also very well presented. One day we were having lunch in the service restaurant when an American lady approached our table. ‘Oh, haven’t you got great hair, may I take a picture?’ I knew full well she wasn’t referring to my hair (ref. newsletter no.10.) and turned to look at Mike. He was of course BEAMING at this and was more than happy for her to take several photographs. This was all in aid of her husband so that he could show the barber how to get his haircut in a style that his wife would like.

We had a wonderful time and made some new friends whilst at sea. You can see how far we went on the map below. It was a great way to see a little bit of Alaska that would have taken weeks to get to by road. Ketchikan for example is only accessible by sea or the air.

On our return to Vancouver we went straight back and rejoined the motor home safe and sound in Gibsons. After a couple of days we headed back across to Vancouver and made preparations for our next visitor, my middle sister Catherine. She arrived on a Thursday and our plan was to spend some time in Vancouver and then cross over to Vancouver Island after the weekend when we thought there would be less queuing for the ferry.

We undertook a treetops walk along elevated walkways through the Douglas pine trees in Capilano Park. In order to get there we had to cross the Capilano river gorge on the Capilano Suspension Bridge a height of 70 metres and a span of 140 metres. Incidentally the bridge consisted of two cables and a wooden plank floor. We didn’t dare let go of the cables as it was swinging a lot with all the people on it. That evening we took an ordinary bus and a sea bus to Gastown. Whilst on our way we saw the number 6 bus heading to a destination called Davie. Proud to see a bus with our name on it we had to take a picture of it. We have since seen an old guide book which states that Davie Street has ‘a lot of women looking for action after dark’. We don’t know if Davie Street has cleaned up its act or not but the only action we were after was a nice meal (we had an Indian). Afterwards we watched the steam powered clock give a Big Ben blast at 8.00pm through its steam whistle.

We liked the sound of Harrison Hot Springs just east of Vancouver for the weekend but unfortunately it wasn’t as we’d imagined so we headed on to a Sasquatch Provincial Park near another lake just north. We circumnavigated the lake on a very pleasant walk through the forest the only negative being the enormous mosquitoes.

After the weekend we headed across the water to Vancouver Island. A couple of porpoises accompanied us along the way, playing in the ferry’s wake. We visited the 60 foot high Elk falls near Campbell River. We had planned on swimming in the river but worried that we might get swept downstream we decided to go swimming at nearby Loveland Bay Provincial Park instead. Our pitch was right next to the lake and we had steps to our own private beach. Catherine kindly inflated our rubber dinghy for us so we had little rowing trips out on the lake. We really enjoyed a couple of nights there just relaxing in the sunshine and enjoying the idyllic setting.

We had one night in the capital Victoria and then headed north along the west coast to look at the pacific side. This was windier and more rugged. Catherine’s final night was spent overlooking a small river estuary and the sea on land belonging to a logging company. We enjoyed watching a lone seal fishing in the water as well as the birds.

After Catherine left we headed north to the trendy little ski town of Whistler and then through more stunning countryside into the desert and a town called Kamloops where we are at the moment.

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